DIARY
CHARLES MOORE The Lambeth Conference is supposed to be important in the lives of Anglicans. It only takes place every ten years and is the sole opportunity for bishops of the entire Communion to meet all at once and agree. It was therefore at first sight surprising that the Church Times, which one would have thought had a vested interest in talking up these things, chose for its main front-page headline last week: 'THE BISHOPS JOIN THEIR WIVES FOR A DAY IN LON- DON'. Nice as it was to know that '. . . the sun shone warmly on Lambeth as bishops and their wives walked hand-in-hand through Mrs Runcie's beautiful garden towards the heartening chicken, ham and salad in the marquees', one might have felt that the proceedings and decisions of the conference were more important. (Would the Church Times of the first Easter Saturday have reported: 'CROWDED STREETS BELOW GOLGOTHA CAUSE HEADACHES FOR HOUSE- WIVES'?). On reflection, however, one must congratulate the editor of the Church Times on his news sense. It is not every day that hundreds of bishops join their wives for a day in London, and the event was certainly more remarkable than anything which the conference had decided. Even this week, when Lambeth has voted on the question of women bishops, the result has been an 'agreement to disagree'. The Americans, who seem to be allowed to attend the conference in unrepresentative- ly large numbers, will consecrate women as bishops, as they would have done anyway, and the Church of England will not, and leading figures on both sides will continue to assert, against all meaning of the word, that the two churches are in communion' with one another. Although there is great merit in many of the churches taking part In the event, I see none in the conference Itself. Its chief role, apart from giving bishops the opportunity to join their wives for a day in London, seems to be to give an airing to the latest heresy. A couple of African bishops, for instance, have been arguing for a more sympathetic attitude towards polygamy. Soon, no doubt, mem- bers of the General Synod will be com- plaining about the 'very real hurt' felt by polygamous men debarred from the priest- hood. By the next Lambeth Conference, we shall be flooded as each bishop joins his wives for a day in London.
Irecently spent a weekend in Stratford, seeing three plays in two days. The Plain Dealer, in the Swan Theatre, was just plain good. The Tempest was good, except for John Wood as Prospero, who thought that he could only impart meaning to the text by completely ignoring the verse and spit- ting a lot. Much Ado About Nothing was the third. It was simply appalling. Only Dogberry was passable. Some of the women — inaudible, wooden, flat-voiced — would have disgraced a school produc- tion. Benedick and Beatrice were worse. Neither gave the least sense of any tension between or interest in the other. Both depended solely on mannerisms. Beatrice took off Mrs Thatcher and Benedick acted like a homosexual waiter in a Carry On film. But what was really extraordinary about the performance was that the audi- ence loved it. Mostly teenagers, they squealed with delight each time Benedick ended a limply delivered speech with a wiggle of his leg. What was funny? Was it that they were pleased and surprised to be able to understand jokes in Shakespeare (though Beatrice and Benedick managed to destroy all the jokes that appear in the actual words)? Was it that they liked the director's notion of setting the whole thing in mid-20th century Italy? Did the actors' mannerisms refer to a television program- me which we had not seen? It was a mystifying and a gloomy evening.
Last Friday Mr Michael Foot was host to dinner in the House of Commons for Victor Sassie. Victor has just retired from the Gay Hussar restaurant which he ran so well for 40 years. The dinner was for regulars such as Mr Foot, Bernard Levin, Alan Sapper, the trade unionist, Andre Deutsch and Anthony Howard. I was sad not to see Mr Roy Hattersley there. Almost everyone present paid good tri- butes to Victor. Then Lord Longford stood up and said that Victor had not only been kind to the great, but also to the despised of the earth, such as ex-prisoners. He, Lord Longford, had often brought along such people, including 'some chaps who had popped plastic bags over people's heads and that was the end of them'. Our cheering at this was a little ragged as we found ourselves privately imagining the day when Lord Longford brings Myra Hindley in for the famous cold cherry soup and smoked goose with scholet.
It was Victor who made the best speech of the evening. In it, he described an occasion on which, in mid-summer, Lord Longford entered his restaurant wearing a greatcoat with large blobs of paint on it. Without comment, Victor took the coat to the kitchen and got the stains off. Later in the week, Lord Longford came in again, and the coat had fresh paint stains. Again Victor removed them, unnoticed by the wearer. The following week Lord Long- ford came in, without the coat. Victor asked him where the coat was. 'Oh, I left it on a train. But it doesn't matter — it wasn't mine anyway.'
Like most people, I know nothing at all about the Hotol space project which the Government is refusing to fund. In the absence of such knowledge, the best way of forming an opinion on the subject is to read the letters about it in the papers. From the hectoring and pompous tone of the project's supporters, I have concluded that the Government is right not to help. In the Times on Tuesday, Group-Captain Leonard Cheshire said:
It stands to reason that in order the better to harness the earth's resources for the common good, we need to extend our influence to the wider environment of which the earth forms part.
To what reason (or experience) does that thought stand?
Last week, The Spectator gave a party for those of our subscribers who came up trumps with our recent recruitment drive and provided two or more names who took out subscriptions. Their reward, if that is the right word, was to meet some of our contributors. Columnists were present, ex- cept for High Life who, characteristically, crashed his sports car trying to get to an airport in time, and Low Life who, equally characteristically, was living in borrowed luxury in the South of France (see p.41). The party was a great success. The subscri- bers moved confidently among us, asking pertinent questions, while the contributors were touchingly nervous at having to meet real readers. Our subscriptions now stand at 19,000, a record, contributing to a total circulation of more than 36,000. Wouldn't a thousand people like to round the figure off and make it 20,000?
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